Friday, September 20, 2013

Her Majesty held an open media event, talking out of both sides of her mouth as usual after the state finally released the test scores, even though the board voted to blow off the scores because of the computer glitches. Actually Wendy has been blowing off the scores since day one. I used to go to the board meetings when John Kline would give the results, tell us they would be analyzing them and deciding on a course of action. And that was the last we heard about it until we heard the same thing the following year, during which they were "never satisfied and always trying to improve".

This year, however, we also had the school grading fiasco, after which GiaQuinta said they would also blow off the grades and grade themselves. If they give themselves an "A" they can hang up all those banners again. Or just wait for the new Glenda Ditz system which will give every school an "A" with no more "F"'s like the new FWCS system.

Monday, September 9, 2013

The bipartisan panel investigating the Tony Bennett incident of grade fixing concluded he did nothing "nefarious". The changes made to get a benchmark charter school up to an "A" rating were applied across the board and likely even improved the grades of urban schools. FWCS might even have gotten to hang up their "A rated" banners again. But they protested too much. Like with the computer glitches during ISTEP which turned out to have no measurable effect on the scores.

What Bennett did was just ill advised, especially when the education establishment held him in such contempt. So he gave them an opening to denounce testing and grading, which they also despise, while telling us they welcome accountability. Hey, not everyone was socially promoted.